


Run For Cover

by thesignsofserbia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Great Hiatus, Jim Moriarty's Web, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, Serbia - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach, Sherlock's Exile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 22:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19305526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesignsofserbia/pseuds/thesignsofserbia
Summary: His destination is Away, he’s running to Not Here.Sherlock runs through the trees and the mud, the rain and the cold, through the pain and the fear, and he knows it’s not enough.





	Run For Cover

**Author's Note:**

> My interpretation of Sherlock's life on the run.

 

He thinks what he misses the most, is something boring. To be somewhere warm and dry, a place where he can curl up in front of a roaring fire, a shitty electric heater, or even just lie down for a really long time; the more mundane the better. He wishes he could put the world on pause, so if only for one night, he could just stop _thinking_.

He just wants to remember what it feels like.

The boots are waterproof, and his clothes are thick, but February in Eastern Europe does not compromise. Winter seems to shadow him across the globe, hemisphere to hemisphere, and no matter how many new socks he buys, the boots just won’t dry. Replacing them is not an option; breaking shoes in properly would take weeks, and he just can’t afford the blisters. So as a result his feet remain always very slightly damp.

Relatively, considering his current predicament, something like that should be insignificant. It upsets him anyway.

Accommodation has turned out to be one of his biggest problems, because you’d be surprised how difficult it can be sometimes to find lodgings that don’t require ID, in places where no one will remember your face. In some countries it can be nigh impossible, Singapore was a _nightmare_.

He can never stay in one place more than one or two nights, so pay-by-the-hour rooms and hostels are his preferred choice, the shadier the better. There’s rarely any hot water and the heating is dodgy at best, but the cold is a necessary sacrifice.

Anonymity is imperative. If he wants to have any chance of surviving this, there can be no exceptions. Occasionally he’s had to resort to squatting or lurking in a 24 hour café with twelve cups of coffee, and more than once been forced paying tongues not to wag, but even that is risky; an impression is left, and there is no loyalty in the promise of a higher bidder.

The fire is a nice thought, but there’s no place for naivety here; time won’t stop for him. So he stays cold. Hiding in the shadows, Sherlock buries himself in the landfills of humanity. These people, he sees them, he _notices_ , and he wants to be sick. But there’s no justice; he can’t touch them. It’s just the consequences of reality. _His_ consequences.

~

So in the most complicated game of hide and seek on the planet, Sherlock goes to every corner of the earth. Countries he’s never seen, cities, towns, postcodes he’s never heard of, to find people or places sometimes based on just a single word of reference, a nickname, a tattoo, a ticket stub.

It’s not like there’s a _guide,_ a helpful list of each operation, the name and address for every cell. He’s flying completely blind. From day one he had nothing, no intel, no target, no destination at all. Barricaded up in a last-resort bolt hole in Croydon, trying to pretend like his face wasn’t plastered across every screen in England, it took a week just to find a _starting_ _point._

James Moriarty’s legacy is undeniably brilliant, because it’s _not_ a network, and there is no central point. Access to communication and information has been strategically structured to keep everyone expendable, making infiltration the world’s biggest headache for anyone stupid enough to think they could get close.

The web is designed to operate as individual cells, interacting with one, maybe two others at most. Nothing is linked, and everything is on a need to know basis. Only the spider could see it as a whole, cut off sections out of favour, spin new ones in their place.

Just _finding_ these people, these separate groups, is extremely difficult, and determining their position or potential connections to the rest of the web almost impossible. Hundreds, maybe thousands of strands, united only by a name no one will speak.

Consulting criminal. Genius.

His vision, creativity, attention to detail…Moriarty beat him, he set Sherlock’s entire world ablaze in a firework display to eclipse all others. That level of quality deserves a tremendous amount of respect, but now it’s his turn; to return the favour, tear down everything the man stood for, rip up his memory piece by piece. Sherlock likes to believe Jim would appreciate the artistry of his downfall just as much as he did his own. Such a magnificent mind. What a waste.

He spends hours pacing ‘hotel’ rooms, any chance he can get, trying to structure it in his mind, identify key players like in a family tree, plan his next move with his left hand, trying to form the bigger picture with his right.

But while Sherlock may be highly adaptable, he doesn’t _like_ change, especially not when he’s working, and constantly being on the move is proving disruptive for his process. It’s too dangerous to go to ground now. There’s no safe space in which to concentrate, no evidence wall to visualise it; he can’t afford to talk aloud or write anything down, but neither can he afford to _forget_ …

So above the staircase in his palace, Sherlock builds a web. He borrows materials from other rooms, curtains, drapes, sheets, anything he can spin into silk. Places, events, people, the journey, all of the tiny strands. He collates them, weaves them all together into a living, breathing organism, a map inside his head.

All those connections, complexities. It’s worse than he thought. So the web continues to grow quietly larger, purple and malignant, until it reaches all the way up to the rafters in the main hall.

He lives and breathes Moriarty’s world, relentlessly and with absolute commitment. But it never _stops_ , there’s simply no time, just brief pauses, a few hours here and there. It’s not enough to form a concrete strategy, and as a result Sherlock is disorganised, forced too often into thinking on his feet.

To think any one individual could single-handedly dismantle an international multi-dimensional criminal organisation is inexcusable arrogance; just blind idiocy. Without planning? It’s a particularly creative form of suicide.

~

Finance is another hurdle, a cliff face that grows higher every day, because travelling in itself is pricey, but factor in the costs of illegal weapons, bribery, false papers, and his expenses are going through the roof.

Sherlock needs serious money and he needs it fast.

Getting hold of it is a challenge, but actually _spending_ it can be even harder. Society is becoming progressively cashless, which can be tricky to navigate when you’re trying to fly under the radar. Because credit cards, bank accounts, they need _identification_ to set up, face to face contact, and every transaction is recorded.

It’s one of the simplest, well known, and most effective ways to find almost _anything_. A cash flow is traceable, and while it’s helpful in chasing down ghosts, he has to be so careful he doesn’t fall into the same trap. So very, very careful. If he’s going to be a criminal, he has to be clever about it, set limits for everything, do nothing that could leave a trail.

He makes countless rules, narrowing down the art of hiding to a _science_. Stolen credit cards can only be used once, as soon as possible, only within the city of the theft, and never for actual purchases. But logistically, even _cash_ has its drawbacks; notes are bulky to carry, and currencies must be frequently exchanged.

So while the Sherlock Holmes in London may have been ridiculously bourgeoise, in the afterlife, he is becoming increasingly desperate.

Sleight of hand is something he’s always had a talent for, but pickpocketing is a precarious dance on the best of days, and the very _last_ thing he needs is to attract attention from the authorities. No amount of desperation is worth taking that chance.

The most sensible thing to do of course, would be to acquire funds from Moriarty’s people. Sensible, but unreliable, because any assets unaccounted for will be scrutinised closely by both police and other very interested and _very_ unhappy parties involved, so again it’s both limited and strictly cash only. No serial killer in his right _mind_ would use the credit cards of his victims.

Because that’s what he is now, isn’t he? A serial killer.

He’s doing his very best to cover any tracks, but Sherlock is _not_ a spy, and he is running out of time. With every life he takes, that’s another body, another crime scene, another murder investigation hunting him. And with every cell he snubs out, more of the wrong people start paying attention, the stakes skyrocketing with every move.

And so for everything he does, there is step two; _clean_.

But there’s no plastic, bleach, or body bags. When it comes to a crime scene there’s only ever one element that needs to be removed, the rest is just overkill. He looks at himself as a vector, infecting everything, invisible dye dripping from his fingertips, seeping from his pores, contaminating the air.

He dissects everything he does with excruciating attention to detail, memorising every movement, every object he touches, rewinding them in his head; trying to imagine what a forensic team might see, what pieces he may be leaving them. If there’s one single scrap of him left at the scene he has to fix it, can’t leave until it’s clinical. It _must_ be clean.

Evidence of his existence on this planet ends on the pavement outside St Bartholomew’s Hospital, January 2012. Anything that says otherwise will be put down. He will eradicate Sherlock Holmes from the present tense, wipe him from every surface until the air from his lungs is nothing but remnants of a bad dream.

It sounds dramatic, but one fingerprint, one stray hair follicle, and they’re all dead.

He doubts anyone will ever manage to connect the dots, not without significant international coordination, but one mistake, one hit gone wrong, one witness, one lucky CCTV camera shot…any one of them could be enough.

He doesn’t know what would happen if he’s arrested; would they be able to identify him? _Can_ you prosecute a ghost, sentence a man with no name or legal existence? It depends entirely on the country in question of course, but he vehemently does not want to find out.

That means absolutely _nothing_ can be done online. A fountain of the incredibly convenient, a database of knowledge that is both infinite and invaluable; modern technology is absolutely not his friend. Human memories can be unsubstantiated, but the internet is eternal; a minefield of hidden markers, stockpiled data, literally uncleanable. Most websites record and store more information than they could process in a lifetime, right down to what items your mouse hovers over and for how long.

He’s not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but good enough to know that although realistically it would never happen, that algorithms aren’t programmed that way, and no human being or organisation in their right mind would care enough to bother; the possibility of being traced is, at least in theory, always there. And that for him, is a problem.

The occasional internet café is all he can risk. And sensitive documents, online checkouts, banks, the deep web, federally operated sites, anything that could raise eyebrows, anything actually _useful;_ they’re all off limits.

For every flight schedule, object, or location he must research, between six and eight similar, opposite, searches are essential to conceal it. Random social media profiles, pages, YouTube videos from at least four different sources are mixed in, the browser history deleted.

, and he still doesn’t feel safe.

Because he’s _not_ safe, not anywhere. He could be living in a cave hundreds of miles away from the nearest human being and he still wouldn’t be.

~

He’s making progress, but every sect he takes out of play; it isn’t a victory, and he’s not getting any closer to the end of the tunnel. It feels like the more he goes on, he only manages to entrench himself a little bit further, and each ‘win’ feels more and more like a setback.

People say the best place to hide is in a crowd, but what they _don’t_ tell you is that they’re also a perilous sea, vastly populated with smart phones, spontaneous selfies, and so many _eyes_.

Sherlock has become violently allergic to both cameras and human contact in general, avoiding all shopping centres and tourist attractions as much as he possibly can, anywhere with high foot traffic, walking or buying questionable vehicles cash in hand to by-pass public transport.

It’s inconvenient, but he’s very concerned that Moriarty’s people aren’t the only ones he has to worry about anymore. With the coverage of his death going viral on a global scale, now there’s approximately seven billion others on that list.

One flicker of recognition, and it all goes up in smoke.

And he’s an international fucking celebrity.

The paranoia is almost overwhelming, and he’s living off street vendors, fast food, and vending machines. He memorises the faces and shoes of those walking behind, in front, and across the street from his position, monitoring every forty seconds to make sure no one is following him.

It steadily grows, to the point where it probably should constitute for concern, but he _has_ to assume there to be a sniper on every rooftop, a knife in every hand, a pistol in every pocket, a bomb in every backpack. He has to be prepared for _everything_ , any marginally possible eventuality, ready to react in a millisecond, and react in the right _way_.

Sherlock is working on the assumption that until proven otherwise, every person he sees actively intends to murder him and execute John Watson in cold blood.

So he takes the paranoia and doubles down. Determined not to look suspicious, whilst being simultaneously suspicious of everything, he walks as closely to buildings as he can to make for an inconspicuous target, takes the second longest route possible to any destination, picks up the keys for his car and waits until nightfall to approach it. Even starving, he refuses to visit the same take-away chain twice, and out in public he almost never stops moving. He sleeps in wardrobes and ensuites with a loaded gun cradled to his chest.

Sometimes it borders on irrational. He’ll throw away his warmest coat because he’s been wearing it for two weeks and it might be recognisable, forcing himself to risk detection in paying for a new one.

Speed bumps in particular are beginning to become a problem. Their echoes translate as gunshots in his head and his trigger finger becomes dangerously twitchy. It’s rendered multistorey carparks practically impassable.

On one occasion, pretending to browse hats at a local market, the vendor tries to sell him the more expensive options, but when he offers up a deerstalker…Sherlock flees the country in a panic. He’s steadily losing his sanity, but at this stage, the anxiety is likely the only thing keeping him alive, so he labels it a problem for the future.

~

He finds it ironic, that to stay hidden, for all the care he’s taken, all the sacrifices he’s made; in order to actually _do_ that, he also has to frequently walk unarmed into the one place in every country where it’s most likely he’ll be caught. Ironic in the sense that you want to rage and scream until you pass out.

Airports are _minefields_ of potential disaster, counter-terrorism and border security making anonymity practically impossible, and just like the online world, absolutely uncleanable.

But Moriarty’s web reaches far, and distance often leaves him no choice. So Sherlock boards dozens of aeroplanes, heart pounding from fear, and hates the man for being so thorough, hates his people for being so spread out, hates the world for having so many continents.

Metal detectors mean he has to lose his firearm, leaving him completely unarmed upon touch down. He must remember to change his bag, his clothes, disinfect the soles of his shoes lest the dogs catch the scent of any explosive or narcotic residue he may have picked up somewhere.

Almost as bad as the risk, air travel only bankrupts him further, because with every flight it’s right back to square one. You can’t just waltz into an airport with a single duffle bag full of cash, red flags don’t get much more blatant than that; he’d be arrested on sight.

Nothing illegal, nothing excessive, nothing hidden.

It limits his financial options considerably, rules stacked on top of each other. The sum he carries is calculated strictly on the alias, the alias is designed not to attract attention, so on the off chance that he actually _does_ have enough to be comfortable, he’s no choice but to leave it behind and start over.

And there are cameras.

Cameras _everywhere,_ hundreds of them, scanned with eagle eyes by a swarm of heavily armed federal police. People who are professionally trained, well equipped, and employed specifically _to_ find him.

There’s a million different variables to be concerned about, and with the stress of capture resting heavily on his shoulders, body language is a serious issue, even for him. Adult males are statistically more likely to be stopped by customs, and he is searched by almost all of them, smiling blandly as he fights the urge to be sick.

Eight layers of security between him and the nearest exit, Sherlock forces his expression to be calm as they scan his passport, trying to remember to breathe. Authenticity is everything, and if they see through the deception, if one watermark is just slightly dodgy, that’s it; no way he makes it out.

False documents are hard to find, very expensive, extremely difficult to get hold of at short notice, and the skill of the author a massive gamble.

So realistically, Sherlock searched for two days to find a dubious stranger, paid him a jaw dropping amount of money to place all of his faith on this one little piece of paper and plastic. And he has absolutely no way of verifying the quality of the passport he’s carrying, or if it will fool anyone at all.

He just lines up politely, and waits to find out. Again, and again, and _again_.

Even with the very best of forgeries, the chances of being caught are still alarmingly high, and the act of changing identities itself is dangerous; even in smaller airports, poorer countries, facial recognition software is becoming more advanced every day.

So he hides in plain sight, buying clothes, books, electronics with no data plan, fake cards for his wallet; all the things a normal traveller is expected to have. A day later, they’ll be rotting in a skip.

He plays the bewildered backpacker, helplessly confused by design, wandering around with his boarding pass, deliberately walking past his gate, ‘anxious’ about making his flight on time. He’s the impatient businessman rude to the stewardess, a grief stricken relative flying to his uncle’s funeral, a new father desperate to get back to his young family.

Sherlock has so many names, so many faces, too many to count. Personalities, backstories, dietary preferences; he creates them, lives inside their heads, pretends to feel the things he can’t afford to.

He’s good at it, he knows he is, but overconfidence will stab him in the back. Because acting is simple, but to play so _many_ parts, adapting to all these different people, so many worlds, full and complete; he’s losing touch with his own.

~

Sherlock wanders across continents half alive, following whispers and chasing down shadows. And for all he knows there could be a million more to come.

Each time is different and identical. The lead will be new, but the circumstances won’t be; a foreign city, with no cash, no weapon, no place to stay, and no starting point. For the first time in his life, Sherlock is utterly lost, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing or even what country he’ll be in tomorrow.

After a while, they all seem to blur into one. Just another crowd, another language, another professional mercenary trying to kill him. A new marathon to run, a new maze to get lost in, another panicked and violent fight to the death.

Almost two years have passed, and inexplicably, it’s still winter. He’s never liked the cold, and after months of perpetual rain, snow, and occasionally sub-zero temperatures, it’s beginning to get under his skin. It’s still necessary, but it’s not just the cold anymore. He’s made so many sacrifices, crossed so many lines; he’s given everything to this. God, he just wants to be warm.

And he still can’t afford to be.

He recognises that he’s running out of steam. This life is not physically sustainable, and it feels like his body is falling apart. Despite the increase in muscle mass, the mixture of exertion and poor nutrition is hitting him hard. Operating on an average of two to three hours of sleep and constantly dehydrated, his joints ache, bones jar with every step, and no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t seem to keep his weight up.

Sherlock’s suicide mission is killing him a lot slower than anticipated.

And paranoia aside, the mental toll is racking up.

Stress when solving a murder case is practically a given, the potential for danger is always there, but that’s what makes it _interesting_. For Sherlock, games with psychopaths are like a good dessert, the first cigarette of the day, and James Moriarty’s bombing spree still qualifies as the best week of his life.

_‘It’s how you get your kicks, isn’t it? You risk your life to prove you’re clever.’_

He’s playing at the highest level now, there are plenty of psychopaths to go around, and he’s practically living on sugar and nicotine. But this is not a puzzle. And Sherlock is not having fun.

Intelligence agents do this sort of thing for a living, though perhaps not quite to these extremes in modern times. But Sherlock _has_ no training, and just being clever isn’t enough. He’s a fast learner, and his instincts are sharp, but inexperience makes him a hundred times more likely to slip up.

This is not the level of stress he’s accustomed to, because Sherlock has essentially been living the climax of a high pressure case every minute he’s been awake for almost two _years_. He’s back standing in that museum, with just ten seconds to save a small child from being blown apart.

He’s looking at John Watson; half a dozen laser dots dancing over his chest.

Only it’s 24/7.

And that urgency demands absolute focus. Intense concentration, mental agility, hyper awareness; his mind must be fully alert and operating at maximum capacity from the _moment_ his eyes open, until the second they close.

He’s pushing himself harder than ever in his life, mind working faster than he thought possible. This is what peak performance looks like for him, and it’s incredible, it’s interstellar, it’s _constant._ It’s the worst experience of a lifetime and he’s burning out faster than a lit cigarette.

He can’t lose them.

But manic from fatigue, he’s out of his depth in every way imaginable, fighting a monster he can’t see, with no one he can call for help. There’s no government department to have his back or an emergency safehouse he can crawl to. Sherlock’s country won’t bat an eyelid if he’s shot, it’s all riding on him.

The responsibility weighs heavily, because if he doesn’t do everything exactly right, if even one move he makes isn’t _flawless_ , they die. It’s that simple. Sherlock _needs_ to finish this; and he’s beginning to worry that he can’t.

Because above all, Sherlock is _tired_. He’s so tired, and he needs to stop so badly, to step back, let it all go. It’s not just the physical and mental sides of it either, because emotionally, Sherlock is being ripped apart. He’ll sit in his wardrobe with his Sig Sauer P220, exhausted but too wired to sleep, and in the privacy of darkness, he’ll cry.

The world is pulling him in every direction, asking more and more for every breath, and isolated from all of humanity, his morale is dipping perilously into the red. He can’t live like this; constantly running, the pressure, the fear.

He thinks about John a lot. Leaving was so much harder than he thought it’d be, and while he’d anticipated missing him, he didn’t expect it would hurt. The guilt, the loneliness, it shouldn’t, but it aches. What he’d give for John to be sitting next to him, just for a moment. There’s so much he wants to say, so many things he should know. But he supposes it doesn’t really matter at this point.

Because Sherlock knows that, realistically, he’s going to die. Presumably quite brutally, or maybe if he’s lucky just an unceremonious shot to the head, but he doesn’t think it will be long now. This isn’t a Bond film and Sherlock isn’t stupid; he’s alone, overwhelmed, and running on fumes. It’s only a matter of time before he makes a mistake. Balance of probability says he’ll be dead within the month. The problem…is that he _can’t_ die, can he?

What if someone identifies the body?

These people don’t give second chances. It won’t matter that he’s dead, only that he didn’t die on _schedule_ , didn’t fall to his disgrace. They’ll do the job they were paid for; they’ll follow through.

He’s struggling to see a way out of this one.

Depression has started creeping in around the edges. There’ll be moments where he slips, but he knows if it takes hold, he’s definitely dead. So he deletes and he deletes, purging it from his brain over and over again, trying to keep it at bay, to permit no distractions. But he’s so exhausted, and he’s running out of strength to push.

He’s also a mass murderer.

It’s something he tries not to think about, but this is reality. He’s not on a case, he’s not bringing criminals to justice. He’s _murdering_ people, these are unauthorised, unprovoked professional executions. He’s good at it too.

And if he could describe what killing people is like in two words, they would simply be; not fair. Because while Sherlock is forced into an _impossible_ position, the fact that he doesn’t _want_ to, it means nothing. Those people won’t be any less dead for his contrition.

He _hates_ it. It’s not who he is, or was ever meant to be, but he finds himself left with exactly zero other options.

It certainly doesn’t help with stress management, but on some level at least, he’s become numb to the violence, desensitised to the act. Sherlock’s conscience has always had a degree of ethical flexibility, and John, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, they justify it. And for now that’s enough, it has to be.

But he’s not a fool, Sherlock knows his consequences won’t wait forever, they’ll find him eventually, and he’s not sure how he’ll respond when they do.

Perhaps he should have become a pirate after all.

~

Sherlock _runs_.

Runs until his lungs give out. And keeps running.

It’s so dark he can barely see, but he doesn’t hesitate, fuelled by instinct and pure panic, forcing his body to move forwards even as it screams with every step, limping at full sprint, arms pinwheeling through the air.

His destination is Away, he’s running to Not Here.

His feet are still wet, only this time they’re bare. He is still cold, but his clothes are not thick. Sherlock isn’t paranoid anymore. They’re right behind him, and he has never felt so afraid.

How did it come to this? His entire world reduced to rubble, beaten down to this one moment. How did he let it get this far?

The second he crossed the border into Serbia everything started to go wrong. It’s been wrong for so long he barely remembers a time it wasn’t, but this is a different level of bad, options dwindling down until there’s nothing he can do but run and pray he makes it out alive.

Sherlock runs through the trees and the mud, the rain and the cold, through the pain and the fear, and he knows it’s not enough.

Because he’s still _not_ a fucking _spy,_ not a soldier fighting for his country, or some shadow from MI6. He’s a detective, a chemist, a musician. Just some civilian running through a forest. He doesn’t know how to do this, how he’s meant to withstand _torture_ when he doesn’t have anything they want and there’s no one coming to pull him out.

These people are going to whip him until he _dies._

This can’t be happening.

He didn’t _ask_ for this, sign some contract and collect the cheque. He planned it in what, a _day?_ His only alternative to suicide. He told himself he was prepared for anything, and so far, he’s been beaten, stabbed, shot at, and chased across the globe as a fugitive. A two year exile with no end in sight. He’s a detective and he’s _killed people_.

How is this _happening_ to him?!

He said anything, but this is _insane_. He can’t do it. Because Sherlock is about the furthest thing from a hero as you can get, he’s not infallible, he’s not a good person; and waterboarding is where he draws the line.

So the civilian runs through his forest, but like the merchant in Samarra, he can’t run forever. Sherlock _isn’t_ a merchant, he’s not a detective anymore either, and at this point he’s not sure he even counts as a _civilian_.

He’s just dead.

And they’re still going to kill him.

~

Against staggering odds, and presumably circumnavigating karma, the universe grants a miracle. John’s miracle.

Locked in a dungeon, in a building that could very reasonably count as an evil lair, Sherlock doesn’t care that he was the damsel in distress, that big brother had to swoop in and save him. He doesn’t care if it’s weakness or failure or anything else. Sherlock’s needed rescuing for at _least_ nine months.

His back is a mess, and he has been awake for far, far too long, but with Mycroft’s help, he walks out (mostly) under his own steam.

He remembers that day at the cemetery, John grieving over his headstone, pleading with him to stop. He swore then he’d do everything in his power to try, to come back to him. He’s kept that promise, but he thinks far as miracles go there’s room for improvement.

~

It’s not great. Because he was right, his brain _needed_ that moment of quiet, just one day out of something stupidly ridiculous like seven hundred, that chance to reboot.

Now he’s home it has that chance, but he’s killed the battery. And just like all the rest of Sherlock’s organs, his brain has had quite enough; it’s not all that interested in turning back on.

With so much input, so much raw data rushing in without the opportunity to be processed, not only is his brain uncooperative, his palace is in _chaos_ , gigantic stacks of paper cluttering hallways, ripped up carpets, broken furniture; really pushing the definition of ‘clutter’ to breaking point.

And under that much pressure, with limited resources, some parts seem to have been prioritised just a little _too_ much, his mind completely reorganised.

The worst centrepiece of all time; still right there in the main hall, pulsing, breathing, violet as his nightmares. All the little pieces he stole, spun into silk, cannibalised from his own brain, anything not immediately vital reworked and repurposed, channelled into something more practical for The Objective.

He put so much of himself into that web, and perhaps a little more literally than intended. Using parts of his palace as scrap material…he’s beginning to question the wisdom of the decision. Because what would it mean if all those throw rugs and tablecloths _weren’t_ just pieces of decorative crap his mind sprinkled in to complete the picture? They could have represented something else entirely, something of _his_.

He never thought about it like that before. Maybe that was a grave mistake.

Two years have left him scattered, with little misfires happening here and there, zaps of electricity in a faulty circuit. He imagines what it would look like, little blue sparks of lighting jumping over his grey matter.

He has the concentration span of a slightly brain damaged mosquito, fading in and out of the room at random moments, frustrating Mycroft to no end.

“…about the identification process after the exhumation. You’ll need to be at the courthouse on Thursday.”

To be honest, he thought it was Thursday already, but maybe he’s just confusing it with Tuesday. It’s not the weekend in any case, although statistically there’s a twenty eight point five percent chance that it is.

 “Court house?”

 “For god’s sake Sherlock, did you hear _anything_ I just said?”

It’s fifty-fifty between high-strung, and complete shutdown, there’s no middle ground to be had. When he’s alert, he is _very_ alert, constantly moving, dissecting every observation, taking note of every weak point and blind spot in the back of his mind without realising he’s doing it. He’ll function perfectly well, but just a little too fast.

He’s detached, distracted, and disproportionally intense.

Then he’ll space out for a while, not really thinking much or contributing to the conversation. Heavy in a bland, vacant sort of way like when you’re on holiday and nothing is all that pressing anymore; just somebody else’s problem.

Sherlock’s “mission” as Mycroft refers to it, is done. And without that weight, the constant threat of death hanging over his head, his brain isn’t particularly inclined to be hurried. Because what does it really matter if he misses a court date? No one’s going to die over a bit of rescheduling.

Sherlock could sleep all the way through February if he wants to, and he’s more than a little tempted to try.

Mycroft says its shock, but he still isn’t sure how he feels about any of it. Because while he’s ridiculously glad to be alive, something in his head just isn’t right. With the electricity flickering in and out; he isn’t in control.

~

Sherlock reunites with John in a manic flurry, his mind in eight places at once, and simultaneously not anywhere at all.

At full speed Sherlock is _busy_. Grinding out priorities one to eighty, sweeping the room and everyone in it, he has the diners counted and the exact distance to all emergency exits burnt into his eyelids before he even registers John is in the room. Because in Sherlock’s new system of priorities, logistics are _everything_.

It’s not that he’s _looking_ for threats exactly…more like he’s calculating potential ways a threat _could_ happen, now, in this environment and how they could best be avoided.

For example, Sherlock registers that there are two firearms currently in the room. One in his coat pocket, the other, an illegal Beretta in the ankle holster of an off duty constable, one who _really_ should invest in longer trousers. The fact that he even owns it, never mind wears it to dinner with his _wife_ , says reckless, it says trigger happy, a man _desperate_ for the chance to be a hero.

So _yes_ , he _is_ a potential threat, and it’s important Sherlock _knows_ this considering he’s just about to cause a scene.

All of this is going on in the background, tiny sparks of information flickering into and out of his conscious mind, automatically keeping tabs on everything that moves while he’s in the middle of a sentence. His brain is trying to do too much at once, and it’s incredibly distracting.

It’s barely a heartbeat of a moment, but when Sherlock sees his face for the first time in so long, it feels like a perfectly executed blow to the solar plexus. The wind goes right out of him, and logistics stutter in their tracks.

John looks tired. He looks like a man still recovering from a heavy loss.

_‘You were the best man, and the most human...human being that I’ve ever known, and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie.’_

It’s everything he’s been running for _, the only thing he ever wanted for two years of his life._ There wasn’t a single day he didn’t think about this moment, and now suddenly, overwhelmingly, he’s right here living it.  And he has absolutely no idea how to process that.

The moment is paralysing, because while he’s successfully arrived from point A to point B, everything according to plan; he’s realised too late that he’s not ready for it at _all_.

John is the most important thing in the entirety of London to Sherlock right now, and probably the world. But he’s vital in an _emotional_ capacity, and sentiment as a priority, is dead last. Unable to form a response to the situation in front of him, his brain automatically defaults back to what it knows; logistics, practicality, The Objective, the things that kept him alive.

The world is back at full volume, zero to sixty in a quarter of a second.

Caught between the mindsets of home and away, and incapable of concentrating on what he actually came here to _do,_ Sherlock’s behaviour is erratic, his words mostly superficial, and his emotional involvement a solid flatline. The scene is more violent than expected, and Sherlock gets a bloody nose, but the constable with his Beretta shows remarkable self-restraint. Good for him.

Sherlock goes home and sleepwalks through the next two days.

~

When he’s engaging, the world looks over exposed. It’s like a rainy day, the sky is overcast, but the reflection of light through the clouds makes it almost painfully bright. Not quite certain what he should focus on, he opts for _everything._ And ‘everything’ is just so unbelievably _loud_.

When he’s not, the kettle will whistle on the stove, boiling itself dry just two metres away, and he might not even hear it.

Either way he’s adrift.

Mycroft gives him the exact spiel you’d expect; condescending and oversimplifying to create a false sense of calm. He just needs ‘a bit of time to breathe,’ to ‘get his head on straight again,’ but Sherlock thinks that more accurately, what he _needs_ , is his brain running through some type of de-radicalisation program.

The meeting with John is _bothering_ him.

He can’t stop thinking about it. Because there are…discrepancies. Under closer scrutiny and with the benefit of hindsight, the memory is very different to his understanding of what happened, and his decision making capacity is looking questionable at best.

Why did he say that? And the _eyeliner moustache?_ It barely feels real, like a nightmare you don’t quite remember. What on earth possessed him to lose his senses so spectacularly? No matter how many times he tries to dissect it, he can’t come up with an answer. His recollection of the actual thought process behind almost all of that night is alarmingly blank.

He can’t shake that image in his head, the hardness in John’s eyes.

He knows exactly what it looks like; all of his wires are crossed, and social interaction has definitely been affected. But Sherlock was _not_ inebriated. He hasn’t so much as glanced at cocaine for nearly six years now, and he has absolutely no intention of breaking that streak. He. Is. Clean _._

Like Mycroft is going to believe that.

The truth is, regardless of whether he _wants_ it to be true, Sherlock’s world has changed a lot since he left London. It’s been just him for so long, in circumstances so violently hostile, that forced to become completely self-sufficient, he lived relying on no one and taking nothing for granted. It’s something he probably claimed he was to John when they first met, something perhaps blatantly untrue. Whether or not he wanted to acknowledge it, there was always _someone_ , even if only Mycroft using MI6 resources to stalk him through CCTV.

It isn’t melodrama anymore. He didn’t just deliberately isolate himself because people irritate him; Sherlock’s brain was a _battlefield_ , just focussed on trying to survive. Reality is harsh, there’s no liberation or mystery to any of it, because being alone on that sort of scale…it’s unimaginable.

It was absolutely, undeniably, quite remarkably Not Good.

And it’s ingrained now. He can’t just switch it off and pretend it never happened, his brain is still assuming anything and everyone outside that ‘unit’ to be a threat.

But Sherlock doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

~

He has Gregory Lestrade slammed up against the door, arm twisted cruelly behind his back without a second thought. When the thought eventually does come, it’s just two words.

 _You idiot_.

He takes a step back and redoes his jacket button, straightening the lapel.

“Sorry about that.”

He’s on edge today. They’ve installed a new speed bump at the end of the street and all his nerves are fried.

“You bloody _ambushed_ me.”

“Yes. Hence ‘ _sorry_.’”

Sherlock turns back to the living room and looks for something to be busy with, exactly what he’s been _trying_ to do all morning. Considering he’s been awake since quarter past four, that makes five hours of complete and utter irrelevance.

“Waited ‘til I made it up the stairs and smashed my face into a _door_.”

He’s hyper and hopelessly bored, but still can’t manage to concentrate on _anything_. It’s been like this for three days now, and it’s starting to get to him.

He gets halfway through a sonata, makes one wrong note and gives up in disgust, reads five lines of some genuinely fascinating scientific journal and immediately loses interest. His mind is all over the place, and the indecision is driving him up the wall.

“Could’ve broken my wrist.”

“I’m not going to say it a third time.”

Why didn’t he know it was Lestrade? Or more accurately, why did he subconsciously recognise his footsteps and still decide to attack him?

He knew it was Lestrade without _knowing_ it was Lestrade, but the part that _did_ know also had a part that wasn’t sure, and _that_ part had a fear response. That must be _some_ complex layering going on there for his _subconscious_ to have a subconscious. Maybe his misfires are having misfires, it’s no wonder he can’t concentrate.

“Half tempted not to give it to you now,” Lestrade grumbles.

Sherlock’s neck snaps around so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. Because Lestrade said _it_. Not _them_ ; it.

The adjustment hasn’t been instantaneous, London is a lot to take in all at once, a city so unique, vibrant. _His_ city, her streets painted with memories, real memories of a real life. A world so familiar and so far out of touch. There’s so much data to be processed, the old, the new… stack that on top of a two year mental backlog of his own, and he’s not sure how he’d even start.

But Sherlock has _done_ responsible. He’s had restraint, been disciplined; careful almost to the point of insanity. And right now? He doesn’t want ‘work through’ anything, do the housekeeping, jump head on into the debrief.

He wants to live as he used to, to just let life _happen_ to him without the need for constant control and censorship, to do precisely what he wants to do and exactly nothing else. Because back in 221B, sometimes he’ll have moments where it’s so familiar that just for a _second_ , it feels like none of it could have happened.

He desperately wants to hang onto that feeling for as long as he can, forget everything else for a while and just breathe it in.

Familiarity doesn’t come just geographically either, because just three days after Lestrade’s bear hug nearly upgraded his cracked-rib to fractured, he was standing in Sherlock’s flat with a box of files in his arms. London’s seal of approval, Sherlock Holmes rising from the dead.

It’s probably several shades of illegal, but DI Lestrade is in a unique sort of position; the outsider who refused to fall in line, who defended his beliefs with a fury that almost cost his job. He was the underdog and he’s made every single person in that building the fool. Because he was _right,_ the only police officer in London not to bow to the hands of a master criminal.

Now Sherlock is not only innocent, but _alive,_ and extremely irritated about it; the walking proof of their failure. And Lestrade is definitely not above rubbing their faces in it.

Vindication lends a tenuous sort of power, a moral high ground to wield over the heads of his superiors. So he brings Sherlock the unsolved cases, all the ones they missed, and he finds the answers in seconds.

Mycroft ‘suggested’ he take a break, so of course he throws himself back into his world headfirst and hits the ground running. Sherlock doesn’t stop, he takes every single case, barely once pausing for breath. So much has happened in his absence, and he’s working triple-time to catch up; he’d accept the problem of a missing _cat_ right now just as quickly as a double murder.

Because _this_ is who he is, who he’s supposed to be, the world’s only consulting detective; somewhat less dead than previously estimated.

It must be humiliating he thinks, to see how they needed him, the man they persecuted and cast out. Because if they hadn’t, they could have closed these files months ago, each and every one.

‘It’ means Lestrade has a case, and not some past tense showcase of their inadequacy, a _real_ one, a live, vicious, beautiful _murder_. And he’s giving it to Sherlock. Oh, and their _faces_ when he walks into the scene. It’s going to be magical.

“I’ll get my coat.”

~~

His city, the game, it’s still every bit the same as he remembers. Half the time.

In the action, the stress, the climax, Sherlock is incandescent. He sees everything, reacts to events before they even start to happen, catches every scrap of detail from a single look. He is frighteningly good, desperation for normality spurring him on.

But solving a real one is a bit different than how it was flicking though folders on his sofa, where he can lose a train of thought, zone out for minutes at a time, take a three day brain freeze holiday, misfires zapping away in private.

Scale is the concern.

At home, alarmed by the speedbumps, Sherlock might drop a teacup, he might get distracted and forget what he was doing. He’ll concentrate a little _too_ hard, waste time obsessing over the tiniest detail, or get so irrationally angry over a piece of evidence missed by the forensic team that he has to take a two hour walk to calm down.

It’s not important. 221B is a neutral state, no real pressure or responsibility not to slip up; his bubble of fractured time. There’s only so much damage you can do in your dressing gown shouting at pieces of paper. A bit of broken crockery is hardly the end of the world.

Working a police investigation is an environment where circumstances are extreme and consequences matter. Danger, violence, deadlines, laws. _Ethics_. There are boundaries, levels of what is and isn’t acceptable, but also the extents to which he used to get away with pushing them, how far they would let him go. He needs to be consistent.

He can’t just drift off or check out for a day, he can’t be too aggressive, or _too_ Not Good, can’t forget to communicate altogether, cut everyone out and try to work the entire case on his own, not more than usual anyway. Others are relying on him to be present and in control.

Again he’s faced with the same problem; react quickly, but react in the right _way._

This is where things start to get tricky. Because it’s the same as it was with John in the restaurant, he’s forgetting to factor it in.

But how do you factor in a misfire?

Sherlock is the same person, with the same skillset. But his brain is doing lots of things on lots of different levels, and he’s not always privy to all of them anymore. He’s given up speculating. Because to try and sift through all the levels of his subconscious, at this point he’d need a lift.

He’s aware the problem _exists_ , knows that something still isn’t quite right, but it’s impossible to pin down. Everything feels normal on the surface, so he just goes about his day, focussed on the problem in front of him, completely oblivious to what his subconscious’s fourth subconscious might be thinking.

Or _remembering_.

He’s in the conference room, quite literally laying it out on the table, jabbing at the map, throwing photos in people’s faces, working up to his big reveal. He’s being theatrical, he’s loving it, and his audience is, reluctantly, engrossed.

It comes out of nowhere, for absolutely no reason. Sherlock is perfectly fine, he’s not under any particular time limit or stress, there’s no alarms, no surprises, not even a headache. It’s almost _fun_.

_The whip strikes hard, lashing across his skin._

The scars on his back _writhe_ as he feels the leather cut him open, sharp as glass with the force of the swing. He cries out, doubling over in shock, palm slamming down onto the table to support his weight.

“Sherlock!”

Lestrade is at his side in seconds as Sherlock gasps, vision blurred, still hunched over the table. And he can see Lestrade’s mouth moving, the shock of the room, but he all he can smell is blood, bile, and black mould.

It’s wrong, everything about this is wrong, it doesn’t make sense, so many contradictions. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, but every sense in his body is telling him he’s been thrown into a tank with a great white with no warning and no visuals. That, and that he’s going to be sick.

They stare for what feels like an eternity before he manages to grit his teeth, force the sound out.

“Get. Me out of here.”

Pulling Sherlock’s arm over his shoulder, Lestrade doesn’t hesitate, supporting him as they make a hasty retreat to his office, Sherlock stumbling, fighting just to keep himself upright. As soon as the door slams shut, he instinctively rips himself away.

He makes it across the room by just a fraction of a second before being violently sick in the wastepaper bin. A distraction that might just have intercepted what could have been a quite severe panic attack. He’s never had a panic attack in his _life_. He’s _also_ never encountered a great white shark outside of an aquarium, but he imagines it would feel something like that.

Kneeling on cheap, ugly carpet, Sherlock registers that he’s going into neurogenic shock, his body reacting viscerally to imaginary pain. His hearing fades to a whine, as his vision begins to distort in a very particular way.

Closing his eyes, he presses his face against the fabric of the (equally tacky) sofa and tries to control his breathing, willing himself not to faint. Alarm bells are ringing wildly in his head, urging him to flee; change his name, his face, his backstory, his dietary preferences, find somewhere with no speed bumps, run for cover and never stop.

He’s always been able to trust his instincts, but this time…he genuinely doesn’t know what it is he’s supposed to be running from.

The disorientation subsides, but he’s left physically shaking. Because it hurt, the pain, it was so real _,_ he _felt_ it slice into his skin.

Only it was nothing, no one touched him. The biggest overreaction of all time.

The world split down the middle, with parts of him on either side. He could see the conference room, but he wasn’t _there._ He felt the cold, the pain, actually believed that it was happening, while at the same time knowing exactly where he was.

This is not just some misfire, oh no, it’s much worse. _That_ was an honest to god _flashback_ and he has absolutely no idea what to do with that information, or the potential implications it might bring.

He tries to stay as still as possible, resigned to waiting it out as the room spins like he’s having a bad trip. And he did, didn’t he? Sherlock had a two year long _bad trip_ , and it’s quite literally run him into the ground.

 _“_ Jesus _Christ.”_

He’s forgotten about Lestrade.

“You alright?”

He still wants to run, but manages to hastily gather what’s left of his dignity and drag himself up onto the sofa instead, trying to nod as calmly as is possible while gasping for oxygen.

He’s got about a forty-five second damage control window to come up with some sort of explanation for this, some vaguely plausible excuse beyond ‘basket case,’ but exhaustion has him crashing. He wants to lie down in front of that fire, the safe place he never saw, somewhere warm where his feet will be dry.

Sherlock’s feet _are_ dry, and the office is a comfortable twenty two degrees, but he isn’t safe, not even in his own head apparently.

Lestrade comes and perches carefully next to him.

“What just happened?”

His voice is gentle, and Sherlock trusts Lestrade implicitly, but at the same time, he doesn’t trust him at all. And with a twinge of guilt, can’t help from wishing he were John.

“I threw up.”

“Sherlock, you started screaming in the middle of a sentence. You were in so much pain you couldn’t _walk_.”

“Oh sorry, I must have _missed that part_ ,” he snaps.

Lestrade is quiet for a long time, waiting for Sherlock to talk to him. But he can’t, because what is he supposed to say? He just collapsed in the middle of the man’s office for no apparent reason, threw up, and nearly passed out. What explanation is there for that?

“What’s going on with you?”

Sherlock tugs on his hair in frustration.

“I don’t _know.”_

He doesn’t know what the problem is, and he doesn’t _want_ to. He just wants it to stop happening.

“Do you, er, want to talk about it?”

He sees the sincerity in Lestrade’s eyes, and for a moment he’s half tempted. An honest, human conversation. He doesn’t know what he’d say, but he knows it can’t happen, even if he wanted it to. Sherlock likes Lestrade, he’s always been a good friend to him, but he’s also a good _police officer_ with a good moral compass. And the space where Sherlock’s moral compass should be, is now just one supermassive black hole.

Not a soldier, or a spy. Still a murderer.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

Lestrade’s feelings aside, today’s episode can’t be good for him. His current relationship with Scotland Yard is tenuous at best, and now he’s given away more than enough rope to hang himself with. They’re itching for an excuse, and if he was an officer it would be administrative leave at best, pending a psych eval. Sherlock Holmes; medically unfit.

And he cannot allow that to happen, he _needs_ to work.

But he can still feel it, lingering around the edges of the room, waiting to pull him back under, drag him back to that place. He screws his eyes shut, screaming at his subconscious for its timing.

_Not here. Not now._

“Sherlock, c’mon mate.”

Lestrade is tired, he’s genuinely worried, and absolutely not buying it. Sherlock knows he means well, but he can’t cater to his concern right now. He’s just experienced the spontaneous recall of an extremely disturbing traumatic memory for the first time, and in front of a dozen witnesses. He’s compromised, he wants to go home, and he needs to do it now.

When he makes the mistake of trying to touch him, Sherlock pulls his arm away violently.

 “Piss off Lestrade.”

He stalks right out the building without a single glance through the conference room glass. He doesn’t bother to finish his explanation, for once they can fix their own damn problems.

He’s not embarrassed, why should he be?

~

Sherlock takes a brick to the face and feels utterly drained.

There’s blood obscuring his vision, numbness in his left cheek, he thinks there’s a good possibility the eye socket is fractured, and judging by the sudden onset nausea, he almost certainly has a concussion. The sensible thing to do at this point would be to stop. He should wait for the police, get medical attention for the swelling, safeguard his vision. Chasing the suspect, he realises, would be the perfect analogy, his whole problem wrapped up in a nutshell; running from the pain.

But he follows through all the same, if only to avenge his face.

Sherlock catches him, cuffs him to a drainpipe, and shaken by the unexpected jolt of self-awareness, returns the favour. He’s gone before Lestrade even catches a glimpse, suspect howling in his wake.

The epiphany worries him, and he feels like he’s back on shaky ground. Just when it was beginning to feel like he was getting a hold on life, coming home, working cases, rebuilding his world around him piece by piece. It felt substantial; everything back to normal. Now it feels like the walls he built are made of tissue paper.

Because this is London, reality, it’s all over, he’s _out_.

And Sherlock wants to cry.

Because he _isn’t_ bored, he’s not excited or even content. He’s _exhausted_ , his mind misfiring, zoning out from fatigue, begging him to slow down. He desperately wanted to escape. To stop running, stop thinking, but he _can’t_ , he can’t stop, gears fused into extreme survival mode.

Because it’s completely different in every single way imaginable, but god, it’s still so identical. The city is his own, he has money, a job, a home, and there are people now who care. He’s safe, and he doesn’t have to kill anyone ever again. But none of that makes the slightest bit of difference, because that _feeling_ hasn’t gone, it’s still chasing him.

And Sherlock doesn’t want it to just go away, draw a line through it, try to forget. It’s not _enough_ for it to be over. He wants it to _un-happen_ , wants the universe to just turn around and say; you know what? No. Sorry, we take it back.

The only thing in the world he’d wished for was to come home, but even standing in the middle of 221B, he’s not sure he ever will.

Because Sherlock left a part of his subconscious behind, and that part is still alone. It’s still running through that forest.

He’s running, but it’s not enough.

And Sherlock desperately wants to save that man.

Because they’re _catching up._

~

He remembers that moment, musing about the toll, wondering about when it would find him.

_Tag, you’re it._

Since that day at Scotland Yard, it just won’t let him go.

Sherlock’s vacancy is no longer like a holiday, and his lows are anything but neutral. He has nightmares about airports, startles from any sudden noise, and carries a loaded weapon wherever he goes.

In his mind, he’s still stuck at a dead sprint. And Mycroft is _not_ helping.

Because of all the cities in the world, only Beijing has more security cameras than London. There are approximately five million cameras in the UK, and over four hundred thousand of them are in the capital city alone. It’s mass surveillance; for every moment you spend in public, you are being watched. He notices every single one as they track him, and Sherlock’s skin _crawls_.

And all those eyes in the crowd? They _recognise his face._

With the paranoia lingering, the only thing he knows for certain, is that he is unstable. The instability scares him because it’s only too familiar, he’s been down this road before and it never ends well.

Balance has always been a problem for him, he’ll have periods where he’s productive, clean, almost happy. Then Mania. Apathy. Heroin. They all come swooping in and his life will unravel in a constant cycle of self-sabotage and destruction. So many missed opportunities and catastrophic mistakes.

It’s happening again, he can feel it.

But Sherlock is sick to death of volatility and chaos. He’s fed up with his own subconscious, just spectacularly pissed off with the status quo. Those eighteen months before The Fall were the most stable and optimistic of his life to date, and Sherlock wants to get back to that place. Back to his life, his _proper_ life, a world that makes sense.

He needs clarity.

~

It’s a strange feeling to knock on John’s door, because it’s _John’s_ front step he’s standing on, John’s home, not theirs. Foreign because Sherlock has never really known him to live anywhere else, and uncomfortable because he has to _knock_. Because he’s not welcome.

Ever the narcissist, Sherlock expected John would come; show up to Baker Street, demand answers. They’d fight, John would move back in, and everything would go back to normal. Only he didn’t. He didn’t come looking for Sherlock at all.

_‘He’s moved on with his life.’_

_‘What life? I’ve been away.’_

Sherlock miscalculated. Badly. In fact it’s very possible he never made the calculation at all.

According to Mycroft, since their reunion, John Watson has not travelled within a mile’s radius of 221B, but neither has he gone out of his way to avoid it. His behaviour pattern hasn’t changed one bit, no more or less alcohol, no therapy sessions, no limp, no nothing. It looks alarmingly like indifference, a man who _is_ trying to move on with his life, and the fact that Sherlock _knows_ all of this _,_ albeit involuntarily, feels uncomfortably close to stalking.

Sherlock waits for him, he gives him space, even though it’s taking every ounce of his self-control not to pick up the phone, to send that text; giving up cigarettes has nothing on this. It’s like letting go of heroin, except heroin was never less than two feet away at any given time. But the armchair stays empty, and it starts to become apparent that John isn’t coming home.

But that’s one thing he isn’t ready to accept.

So three weeks on from headbutting a seemingly psychotic ghost in the nose, John stares Sherlock Holmes in the face, his expression completely unreadable. Sherlock debates it; hello is too formal, hi too cheery, John’s name too confrontational. He’ll have to settle for-

“Hey.”

He’s nervous, and you can hear it in his voice. Last time wasn’t sentimental at all, because Sherlock wasn’t thinking about trivial things like _consequences_ , how the conversation might go, or even what he was going to say. He was so busy worrying over schematics he never really got any further than ‘find John.’

And what an unrivalled success that was.

Announcing to your best friend that you’ve just come back from the dead is not generally something you should improvise, and the truth is, Sherlock didn’t even bother to _consider_ how John might react, just based everything on the assumption that John would be pleased to see him.

Which in hindsight is sort of ridiculous. Yes, John would probably rather he be alive than dead in the grand scheme of things, but Sherlock knows him, his temper, the betrayal, the disrespect he felt, how those things manifest in him.

Because killing yourself isn’t quite the same as dying, is it? Not to those left behind. But forcing someone to _watch_ as you violently commit suicide in front of them, putting someone through all that pain and then playing it off like a _joke?_ There’s no words for that. If he’d taken even a moment to think it through, injected just a few molecules of tact…perhaps things could have played out differently these past few weeks. But there’s no point dwelling on what ifs now.

This time, Sherlock feels every milligram of the weight resting on his words; he’s reprioritised and it’s scaring him to death. It should have scared him _before,_ but he understands what’s at stake now and he has every right to be nervous, because the damage has already been done.

It was an important moment, he didn’t get it right the first time, and there’s a very good possibility now that it’s just too little too late. Focussed so much on the drama, the victory, he forgot everything of importance. Now John Watson is alive, there’s less than three feet between them, and Sherlock is still just as afraid to lose him as he was two years ago stepping up onto that ledge.

John doesn’t invite him in or say hello back, but he doesn’t slam the door in Sherlock’s face either which he supposes is something. No one does stony silence like Captain John Watson, formerly of the fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

“I was hoping we could do this again properly.”

No busy, crowded places, no bow ties, no distractions, no constables with illegal weapons. Just them, just how it should have been.

John raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah? And what does ‘properly’ look like?”

He purses his lips in acknowledgement. They both know there’s no ‘proper’ way to do this. There’s no fixing it, but even so, it’s a start. John is listening, or open to having the conversation at least.

“An apology, the things I should have said. What I did do you was sadistic, the worst type of cruelty. You didn’t deserve that pain John, never for a second, and I know I can’t take it back, but I can tell you how sorry I am, for all the hurt I caused you, for betraying that trust. Because your friendship means more to me than anything I’ve ever known.”

“Rehearse that much?”

Sherlock never prepares _anything_ , the world is far too changeable for assumptions, and he prefers to live his life in real time rather than attempting to predict the future.

John’s still right.

Things have changed since the last time. After the incident at Scotland Yard he’s had time to think about it; those nights in the cold, waiting to die in wardrobes and ensuites, all the things he wanted to say. Because he _has_ thought about it, so much and so often he almost knows it by heart.

“Three times in the shower, another two in the cab. The last one possibly out aloud.”

Probably not great timing for a joke but John half laughs anyway, shaking his head. It’s comfortable enough that Sherlock almost smiles. He’d forgotten how at easy it was, how something about John Watson makes him relax instead of fight. It’s been a very long time since Sherlock knew safety like that, the sort of trust he never believed existed. Somehow, he still feels it through the tension, the weight above his head.

“Right. So did you actually mean any of that, or do you just want me to forgive you? Because if you’re just here to try and manipulate me, don’t bother. I’m not interested in stroking your ego Sherlock, or your pride.”

It stings a little, but John is playing fair. And it’s possibly quite a bit more than he deserves.

“This isn’t about pride, I’ve swallowed that. I’m saying I was wrong. Because I made a mistake and I lost, but it was you who paid for it. This? This is me _crawling back._ I mean it, and I’m here to give you the apology you deserve, a thousand apologies if that’s what it takes. Because you are the very last person I could ever want to hurt…but you _are_ right; I’m asking for forgiveness too.”

The admission is tricky, and John probably isn’t going to like it, but honesty is what he asked for. Because _obviously_ he wants John to forgive him, that’s the reason he came here in the first place and it would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

John is a huge part of Sherlock’s world, he’s all the best bits, and he wants that back more than anything, that reassurance, familiarity, solidarity. But he’s not going to fall to his knees, he’s not that person.

He won’t simulate it either. John is not stupid, and as much as he might want John back in his life, there’s no value in tricking him into making that choice, as tempting as it might be. This time Sherlock is sticking firmly to genuine.

So he says his piece openly but logically, emotion without embellishment. He broke first in coming here, and he wants to stress that point, because he _is_ crawling back, and no he’s _not_ proud of it, but Sherlock doesn’t give a damn if he’s embarrassing himself. It needs to be said.

Because this is about John. About how Sherlock forced him to grieve, led him to believe he’d lost a friend to suicide. Because it _still_ doesn’t matter that he didn’t want to, or even that he saved their lives. Those two years are just as real, and those memories won’t go away for them either. Loss changes people, and Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, John, they will always remember what it felt like when he was dead.

He just needs to make John understand on a deeper level that what happened that day, that’s not _him_. The idea belonged to someone else, and he can’t bear the thought that John could look him in the eye and believe there was a choice.

John contemplates him hard, and despite Sherlock’s best efforts, he looks pretty unconvinced.

“That’s a nice speech, yeah, nice sentiment. Didn’t seem to stop you though, because you knew what you were doing, said it yourself, ‘the worst type of cruelty.’ It doesn’t make sense to me Sherlock, it really doesn’t. Because the thing is, I actually thought I mattered to you. I trusted you without question, in my whole damn life; nobody knew me like you do. I had so much riding on that. I thought…Then you did what you did.

“I saw you in that restaurant, and in a single second it was like everything I thought I knew was a lie, you were someone I never believed you could be. I can’t reconcile what you did with the person I knew, that you of all people…the pieces just don’t fit. So tell me Sherlock, what sort of person would do _that_ to someone they _didn’t_ want to hurt?”

It’s a difficult question, because barely one second into planning his suicide, John was always going to get hurt. The danger, the excitement, the sense of purpose that makes him feel alive; Sherlock knew what he was taking from him, he did it deliberately, and if he could go back…it would be worth it every time.

What sort of man is he? Sherlock doesn’t think he’ll ever know the answer.

“A very desperate one.”                                                                                   

John nods, mulling it over in silence.

“Goodnight Sherlock.”

Sherlock watches the door close in his face, and can’t decide whether to be optimistic. John may not have forgiven him, but goodnight is a far cry from goodbye, so he opts for hopeful with a few streaks of pessimism to cushion the fall.

~

Easy case, easy win.

He’s caught the suspect, disarmed him, and the police are spilling in to take the man away. But no one else seems to feel the tension, and he doesn’t understand, because it’s dripping down the _walls,_ saturating the air until it feels like it’s _solid_. It’s choking them.

It feels like every cell in his body is vibrating with it, and Sherlock is hanging onto calm by a single thread.

“Lestrade. Take the gun.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees him taking his time, messing about with gloves and evidence bags, bending down to retrieve the suspect’s fallen weapon almost casually.

“Not that one.”

He speaks quietly so Donovan doesn’t overhear, but his voice is getting urgent, and Lestrade goes very still. The shock is palpable, because there are only two guns currently in the room, and the other is in Sherlock’s hand. The safety is still off, the bullet is still chambered, and Sherlock is still pointing the barrel at a man’s face.

He feels it now, the uncertainty. Sherlock is high strung, and if he were anyone else, they might have picked up on it instantly. Because Sherlock Holmes doesn’t _go_ into shock, he _doesn’t_ freeze up or get carried away. He’s so cold half the violent crimes unit believe he’s an outright _psychopath_.

So the fact that it _is_ him makes the situation feel so much worse.

Sherlock likes a good murder case; he examines corpses for free. He has a history of injecting illicit class A narcotics, doesn’t care if the case is inadmissible in court and is not above breaking a few bones, as long as he gets a result. Before they might have described him as dangerous, and _never_ would they have allowed a gun in his hands. But since his return, if anything they’re more comfortable around him, the lingering guilt surrounding his suicide seems to have humanised him somehow.

Sherlock isn’t a psychopath, he’s never intended to hurt anyone, not really, and he never thought he’d actually take a _life_.

He still doesn’t mean any harm; but that won’t matter if he hurts someone, and the problem is, that he can’t promise he won’t. Because misfires are a lot more serious when they’re literal, and his hands are deadly still.

The man is no longer a threat, and Sherlock actively doesn’t want him to die. But his subconscious is unconvinced, and he can’t put the weapon down, can’t tear his eyes away. Because he never could _before_ , could he? One second of hesitation would have killed him in a heartbeat. Every time it was life or death, every time it wasn’t fair, and every time; he took the shot.

Sherlock’s asking Lestrade to take it from him, not because he _could_ do it, put a bullet through this man’s skull in cold blood, watch his corpse sliding down the wall, brush the bits of splattered brain matter out of his hair. Of course he could, lots of people could, being _capable_ of murder isn’t a crime.

It only matters if you follow through, and even right now in the moment, knowing all danger has been averted and the case is effectively over, Sherlock still can’t say with total confidence he won’t just pull the trigger anyway, kill him point blank for no reason at all. Because his subconscious, the muscles in his finger, they _remember_.

Carefully, Lestrade steps up from the side, and covers Sherlock’s hands in both of his own, lowering the barrel safely towards the carpet. It feels like his fingers are fused to the grip, and his brain screams not to let go as it’s gently extracted.

Donovan takes the suspect away, forensics come and go, until it’s just Lestrade standing by his side. Again he trusts him, but he wants it to be John, and again he thinks he might be going into shock.

“Thank you.”

Lestrade’s concern is more serious this time. He’s thinking back to the incident at Scotland Yard, Sherlock kneeling on the floor of his office, hovering on the verge a panic attack. He tucks the gun into his pocket without comment, but Sherlock knows he won’t be seeing it again. And he has absolutely no intention of asking.

He wonders why it wasn’t questioned before, because he’s drawn it on at least two occasions now, and all he got from Donovan is a nod. Police don’t carry guns, Sherlock isn’t _on_ the police force, he doesn’t have a license, and the gun doesn’t even have a serial number. It’s clearly very illegal, yet no one seemed to bat an eye, just sort of assuming that because he’s ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ that makes it okay.

It doesn’t. People can say his name however they like, shout it, accentuate it, draw it out with embarrassing theatrics; it still won’t change a thing.

Because again, Sherlock wasn’t thinking about consequences, why he’s carrying it, what the police might think, what might happen if he actually _used_ it. If he’d really thought about it, he might have thrown it into the river himself, might not have _bought_ the damn thing at all.

It just never occurred to him that he doesn’t need it.

His mind was spread across a dozen different countries, and caught up in the adrenaline, he wasn’t looking at an armed burglar anymore. Sherlock’s subconscious saw an international mercenary who wanted to kill him, who could topple his whole world with a phone call, murder everyone he loves and enjoy it.

Sherlock tears his gaze away from the wall, the imaginary outline of the suspect that could almost have been made in chalk.

Perhaps he should have done that mental paperwork the second he returned.

~

Mycroft said it would take time…but no matter how many cases he solves, how busy he is; whether it’s something as innocuous as an unexplained taste in his mouth, a bad feeling, a sudden and intense mood swing, out of place memories catching him off guard, or occasionally something more serious; those two years keep finding their way back to him.

Because apparently these things don’t go away when you’ve had enough of them, and if anything, since the incident with the almost-dead burglar, he’d say they’ve probably gotten worse. Sherlock doesn’t dream about airports anymore.

The whole being a murderer part doesn’t go away either, and he feels selfish on some existential you’re-definitely-going-to-hell-now level. Because if you look at it number wise; Sherlock saved his own life, and that of three of his friends, but the scales weigh significantly lower in the opposite direction.

And it’s still not fair. Because Sherlock now has to live with not only the guilt of the imbalance, but the fact that emotionally, he still thinks it’s justified. Dangerous arrogance, a disturbing sense of entitlement, sociopathy; label it however you want, he can’t help it, he’d take those lives again.

A vicious motivator indeed.

~

As unpleasant as being stabbed is, he finds himself wishing he’d managed to do it sooner.

Because yes, fear _is_ a paralytic, but it’s also a catalyst for thought. Because when we’re afraid, _really_ afraid; for better or for worse, it changes things. From that new perspective, some aspects come to matter significantly more than they might have before, others fading to the background.

The paralysis comes from the shock of coming so close to losing something, but it’s the fear that ultimately forces you to confront just how important it actually is. Denial, something you didn’t want to want, all the little lies we use to justify things to ourselves; all meaningless.

John is upset, and understandably didn’t want all that much to do with Sherlock just yet, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. Because underneath the anger, Sherlock knows the fact of his being alive is a huge relief, because at least now, as John’s subconscious sees it, he has the _option_.

He was comfortable staying angry, because he could afford to be, because Sherlock is back, and he isn’t going anywhere.

Sherlock’s death shattered John’s world more than he ever intended, and the idea that it could happen again? It’s huge a reality check, an unbelievably unfair reminder that just because John knows he’s home and safe at 221B, doesn’t mean he always _will_ be.

The action is where John Watson thrives, where he belongs, because John is _not_ the ‘sitting down type’ and never could be. Inaction depresses him, and he knows John sees the day he was discharged as one of the worst of his life, because despite the horrors of war, John didn’t _want_ to assimilate into civilian life, to let go of the adrenaline, the rush of battle.

Even while actively ignoring him, on some level the thought of Sherlock fighting criminals alone must be a bitter one. Because Sherlock risks his life to prove he’s clever, and John was okay with that because he knew he’d _be_ there to take the risk with him, to minimise the fallout.

Only now, Sherlock will _still_ take those risks, but John won’t be there when it all goes wrong.

Instead, he’ll miss everything and see only the aftermath. And if the blade landed just a quarter inch to the right, if he’d died from the blood loss, John would think if only he’d been there, it might have been so much different. Even if there was nothing he could have done.

Sherlock wasn’t thinking about any of that, wasn’t throwing himself into danger in the hopes that John would come. In retrospect, maybe he should have.

~

John looks angry.

And not just normal everyday angry, he’s so furious you can practically see storm clouds in his eyes. Sherlock is no psychologist, but he knows how to read people, and there is not a human being on this planet he understands like John Watson.

_‘There’s just one more thing, one more miracle Sherlock, for me.’_

He takes two steps into the room and slams the emergency stop button in Sherlock’s brain.

Emotional responses can be powerful, and this? This is a big one, because John actually looks _more_ upset than he was the last time he saw him.

It’s the fear, and more than he knows what to deal with. The mixture of emotions is complex, and Sherlock has never met a doctor who does repressed so well. So naturally it comes in the form of anger, the safe response, the one we subconsciously think can’t hurt us. But John is hurting a lot more than most.

Sherlock just watches for a moment in silence, takes in the ragged breathing and white knuckles, and just feels such an overwhelming sense of calm. Because just a few months ago, if he saw John on the street, he’d have turned his back immediately and left the country. As fast and as far away as his legs could take him; white noise in his ears, crashing cars in his brain.

Now, for the very first time in a very long time, Sherlock doesn’t have to run and hide. John is allowed to know that he’s here, to hear that he’s breathing, see that he exists. And John has always seen him so clearly.

_‘No one could be that clever.’_

_‘You could.’_

He’s not afraid of John’s anger, or worried about eggshells. Sherlock knows exactly what to do.

Embracing John feels less like a turning point, and more like the prelude to the conclusion, in summary; parachute deployed. The visceral _intensity_ of the relief takes him by surprise, like someone’s just handed him a list of the dead, and despite almost certainty, John’s name isn’t on it. The fact that he even survived the past two years to get to this point is nothing short of ridiculous, and Sherlock needs to be as close to him as possible to make absolutely sure.

The gesture was for John more than anything, but the physical intimacy really hits home. He’s overwhelmed, exhausted, the vulnerability as aching as unintentional, but John in his arms, corporal, tangible, _angry;_ it’s the emotional closure geography just couldn’t give.

They stand there, Sherlock’s hand cradling the base of John’s skull, and knows no matter how furious John is, it’s something he needed just as acutely. It’s in the way John buries his face into his hand, but leans all his weight against Sherlock’s chest. It’s the fear in his eyes, the full body tremor of relief when he touches him.

It’s the suitcase at his feet.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry guys, that was quite a long one.


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